Is it feasible to start a local forum in 2025? | Lobsters
As a bit of a side project, I’ve been writing a web forum in Common Lisp. This is partly because I want to hone my Lisp skills, and partly because I’m really displeased with Facebook and Nextdoor as the de facto sites for local discussion – so my mental model as I’ve been building is “this is for users in my small town (~60k) only”. This means users are designed to be “verified” by admins before unrestricted posting is allowed, for instance, and the discussion categories I’ve been playing with in the DB are focused on the local area.
It’s been a lot of fun writing the code, but now that it’s got enough features that it could actually be deployed and used, I’m wondering: should I try to deploy it? I hate what Nextdoor calls community, but I’m not sure it’s feasible to create a competitor (for my town) in my garage & get an active userbase by posting fliers at the local library or whatever.
One suggestion: don’t necessarily make it reliant upon user-created content initially. If there are feeds you can automate into it (Council notifications, local weather warnings, etc. etc.) that might be worth trying. Increase the utility beyond just conversation.
